CARLSBAD — The City Council recently approved plans for a new community garden at Stagecoach Community Park and agreed to increase parkland in-lieu fees for developers to help build new city parks and improve existing ones.
The new community garden at Stagecoach will be the fourth of its kind in Carlsbad and the first in the southeast quadrant, according to an April 23 staff presentation.
For 41 years, the Harold E. Smerdu Community Garden in the city’s northwest portion was Carlsbad’s only community garden. Then, in 2017, the Calavera Schoolhouse Community Garden opened in Calavera Hills Community Park in the northeast corner of the city.
In 2018, the Pine Avenue Community Garden, located in northwest Carlsbad, opened in Pine Avenue Park.
The council aims to install community gardens in each quadrant of the city, leaving only the southeast area without one—for now.
The new garden at Stagecoach will replace a fenced-in maintenance yard that is no longer necessary because the city contracted out its park maintenance services, staff said.
The chainlink fence will be replaced with one similar to that at Pine Avenue Community Garden. Construction of the garden will also remove the existing asphalt in the yard and replace it with decomposed granite.
The new garden will have 35 raised planting beds, two of which will be raised for ADA accessibility, as well as an information kiosk, composting bins, tool storage, a picnic table, benches and a shade structure.
According to staff, construction is expected to take four months and will be complete by the end of the year. With the council’s unanimous approval, staff is now authorized to advertise for construction bids and expects to return to the council in June with a selected contractor.
So far, the City Council has appropriated $437,000 from the city’s park in-lieu fees for the garden. These fees are collected from developers who opt to pay them instead of setting aside designated parkland.
Parks and Recreation Director Kyle Lancaster said the new community garden will require an additional appropriation of $183,000 to fully implement the project’s components based on an engineer’s estimate. Maintenance and operation costs are estimated to be around $72,000 per year.
Patrice Smerdu, a member of the Carlsbad Community Gardens Collaborative, has a garden plot in the Smerdu Garden named after her late father.
Smerdu said adding a garden to the city’s southeast corner will help more prospective gardeners stay closer to home.
“It’s just really a delightful plan,” she said.
The city currently has a 400-person waitlist for community garden plots in the city.
At the meeting, the council also approved substantial increases to in-lieu fees for all developers seeking to build residential subdivisions. In Carlsbad, part of the approval process for housing projects requires developers to either dedicate land for city parks or pay a fee. The fees “support the construction of new city parks or park improvement projects.”
The rates haven’t been raised since 2005 and vary depending on the location and type of housing being built. Most of the raises range between 39% and 72%.
The city conducted a study that showed the projected revenue from the new parkland in-lieu fees through buildout is approximately $85 million. Under the previous structure, the revenue was only $33.5 million—about $51.5 million less.
The new fees will be phased in beginning in the upcoming fiscal year and gradually increased over the next three years until they are fully implemented.
